Escape with Jessica Garcia

Jessica Garcia

Illustrator

“We don’t create a fantasy world to escape reality. We create it to be able to stay.” – Lynda Barry

IG: @file.jpg

NYC

What is Art to you?

its whatever i want it to be at the moment, it’s whatever in going through or feeling and when i need to observe art, its an escape to me and allows me to take a break from everything going on and just indulge myself or get lost in whatever’s in front of me to distract myself from whatever else is going on. Art helps me deal with my emotions.

When creating what is your favorite drawing medium to work with?

This ones hard [laughs] i experiment a lot. My go to has always been marker just because they’re easier to carry around, second to that depending on where i’m going to draw would be water be watercolor pencils.

How about embroidery? While looking at your work i noticed that you created an embroidered piece, how did that come about?

That was one of my experiments, embroidery pages on Instagram kept popping up in my explorer page and i wanted to try it, it’s one of my top mediums because its therapeutic to me, i just have to have the time to work with it.

Yeah its really dope, i can only imagine that something like that takes a lot of time. Can you walk us through your creative process?

I have a little folder for reference pictures that i find, that i think are cool and i have to be in a shitty mood cause thats the only way i’ll get something done. I’ll pick one and sketch it out and it’ll spark an idea and i’ll add components to it to make it mine. I’ll sketch it out and project the drawing onto several pages to test out different color palettes, and then i plan out which medium will help me execute it the best, and then i get the final.

How shitty of a mood?

I get the most work done when someone gets me upset/angry, cause i only work when it serves as a distraction. If the work is meant to be the main focus, i look for things to distract me and i don’t get anything done.

Who and or what influences you?

I get a lot of my influence from photography, a lot of the colors and symmetry. A lot from scrolling on Instagram and Tumblr, and my boyfriends art, he’s always helping me push my ideas.

Alright so one final question. What would you name your art style?

I really can’t come up with a name for it, i don’t think my style is solid enough to be a style [laughs] The only consistent thing in my work is probably the color vibrancy but that’s about it.